British Elle hasn't tried to hide the factthat Cheryl Cole is its August cover star. The glossy posted the news via Twitter almost a month back and has been getting its site's viewers geared up for a while. The magazine finally released the cover via Facebook earlier today. Cheryl is photographed by Ben Morris, standing in one of the many streets of London whilst wearing DSquared2, Philosophy and a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes. Elle has produced something different by giving us a black and white cover shot with contrasting orange fonts — an unusual direction for the British monthly.

IMAGE CREDIT: ELLEUK.COM

In spite of giving us Britain's sweetheart, Elle's efforts have fallen flat with members of our forums. "This is extremely awful, not a single thing I like about the cover," commented KateTheGreatest, who kicked off the thread.

GlamorousBoy was also not feeling the cover and wrote, "Oh god…this is a catastrophe, it killed my eyes, especially that horrendous background."

"Wow this is awful, she looks so stiff and uncomfortable. Bad cover image," wrote jenipho.

Forum member honeycombchild noticed the efforts of the team, but wasn't amused over the styling: "Well, it's certainly different. I'm not sure I enjoy what they've done to Cheryl with that jacket, it looks like it's eating her head."

Stay tuned for the accompanying cover story and join the discussion within the thread here.